Let's Talk Atari 2600, The First Few Years

On 03/16/2017 at 12:27 AM by KnightDriver

I'm talking the years 1977-1979. These were my pre-teen years and the beginning of my education in everything nerdy. I saw Star Wars; I played Advanced Dungeons & Dragons; I watched Star Blazers (or Battlestar Gallactica, if you're not into anime); I read The Silmarillion; I went to arcades and played Space Invaders and Asteroids; and I played handheld systems by Mattel Electronics - Baseball being the one I owned. But most importantly was the Atari VCS (later the 2600) I got for Christmas, the first really succesful home video game console.

The Atari 2600 came out in Sept of 1977 and took a year to really get going. By 1979 it was selling a million units and was a bonafide hit. I don't remember exactly when my dad bought the thing but it might have been '79 since that was the year it was the best selling Xmas gift. I like to think he got it in '77, though. The launch 2600s were manufactured in the U.S. and were made of heavier plastic with six switches. I like to think I had one of those "heavy sixers" but I probably had one of those made in the next few years in Hong Kong with lighter plastics - called "light sixers". Let's take a look:

atari2600

Look at that wood panelling! Just like the Ford Country Squire station wagon my parents used to drive us kids in to vacation spots in New England. So 70s.

For those first few years, I played launch games Air-Sea Battle and Combat - both just barely an advance over Pong. In 1978 I played Basketball, Breakout, Super Breakout, Hangman, Night Driver, and Outlaw - maybe feeling like three of those weren't entirely Pong related. And in 1979, I played Adventure, Bowling, Canyon Bomber and Human Cannonball. Now we're talking! Adventure had multiple screens and didn't have a dot bouncing off of walls. The rest, maybe, were still pong-alikes. So what! At least two had simulacrums of people in them.

These few years, '77-'79 had so much more I could talk about like: the dawn of home computers with Apple II, TRS 80 and Commodore PET; the first Electronics Boutique opened in my very home town mall in King of Prussia, the store that would become Gamestop; Richard "Lord British" Garriott's first game Akalabeth; more first fantasy books; my first rock music encounter; and more first scifi movies to reminisce over. The late 70s were a time of firsts, both for me, the video game industry, and nerdom in general.

Cary Woodham

03/16/2017 at 03:05 AM

I never had an Atari 2600 as a kid. I wanted one, but I was pretty young and they were kind of expensive so I never asked my parents for one. And once I was in kindergarten, we got our first computer, an Apple ][+, so I just played games on that. At that age I was more interested in arcade games, which were much better than what was on the 2600. And our computer could play arcade ports that were better than the ones on Atari 2600 anyway. I did play the 2600 a lot at other people's houses, but I was still happy with our computer. My first home console was actually the 5200, and that was a total surprise to get for Christmas as a kid because I didn't even ask for it. But I think by then it was already old and on sale, but I didn't care, I was a kid. I would continue playing that system until Zelda came out on the NES. Then I was all aboard the Nintendo train!

Looking back on it, I think the best games on the 2600 were from Activision. I think I may have asked this before, but have you ever played Activision Anthology on the PS2? It's one of the best game collections out there, even to this day.

Speaking of Star Blazers, I watched that all the time as a kid. Did you know that a few years ago, they remade that series in Japan (it's called Space Battleship Yamato over there). I'd like to see more of the remake, I've only seen a couple of episodes of it, and that was at an anime convention I took my brothers to a few years ago.

KnightDriver

03/17/2017 at 12:26 AM

Yea, Activision did games for the Atari right. I've really grown to appreciate their design aesthetic. I have that Activision Anthology for the Xbox. Most of the best Atari games are in there.
I think I started to watch the Space Battleship Yamato one time. I didn't finish it though. Back when I was a kid, I really got into Star Blazers. One of my favorite tv shows ever.

Super Step Contributing Writer

03/16/2017 at 03:19 AM

It's funny how Zelda is seen by new gamers as experimenting with open-world when older gamers view the original as the first modern open-world game, which was a perfection of the first-ever open-world game, Adventure.

The more things change, the more I remember the time you told me someone used their NES as a HAM radio which made our sudden realization only recently that video game consoles are computers seem so obvious.

Whenever you bring up these years, I think to myself how little I know about everything but the music of that time period, but damn I love the backwards-record-playing, subliminal-message-laying rock music of the 70s.

03/17/2017 at 12:20 AM

I never thought of Adventure as an open-world game. Ha! There's not much of a world there but, yes, you do move around freely from screen to screen.

I should be an 80s music guy 'cause that's when I went to high school. I always figure a person's music is the stuff they heard in high school, but I always looked back to the 70s. Probably because I was into scifi and fantasy literature and prog rock really spoke to that. 80s music had too much gloss and commercial appeal to interest me. I was disgusted by what Genesis and Peter Gabriel became in the 80s, but I like it fine now.

03/17/2017 at 12:43 AM

I mean most people I grew up with say their favorite music is 90s, and pretty much all of us were in high school smackdab in the middle of the 2000s. Maybe junior high is better for music, because you haven't had the awful HS experience yet?

03/17/2017 at 09:38 PM

Interesting. Thing is, the first album I owned was Genesis Three Sides Live in '82 when I was in high school. The second was Peter Gabriel Plays Live from '83. It was from there I went backwards to the 70s stuff. As a kid in the 70s, I wasn't too interested in music. I don't know. I just think of my parents going to high school in the 50s. In their adult hood they would go to 50s dances to bring back their memories of that time. I got nothing like that. I wasn't wooing some girl with Peter Gabriel's 1986 hit "In Your Eyes" like in that movie. If I was wooing anyone it would have been with Genesis' "Looking for Someone" from 1970, or Yes' "And You and I" from '72.

goaztecs

03/16/2017 at 11:49 AM

I should have bought the 2600 and games from the thrifts back in college. The one close to campus had a mountain of games and a couple of consoles. I never had a 2600 growing up (Nintendo house) but the first home video game I played was on an Atari.

That's interesting about how the early consoles were heavier. Where the lighter ones the ones that didn't have the wood paneling?

03/17/2017 at 12:02 AM

They used the wood paneling for most of the 2600 models. There's an all black one though, called "the darth vader".

Mark told me I actually didn't have the "light sixer" back in '79 but the Sears VCS model.

telegames

It has the wood paneling but it's silver around the switches and says Tele-Games on it.

PixlBit